Blog
It’s Not a Meeting; It’s a Way of Being!
In her keynotes, Becky DuFour often uses the phrase "Clarity precedes competence!" Over the years we have heard the term/acronym "PLC" used in so many ways that it will be hard for schools and districts to be truly competent unless they are clear regarding the meaning of the Professional Learning Communities at Work process. If we continue to use the term "Professional Learning Community" (PLC) in the way that it is being used in many quarters, then it truly has lost its original meaning and influence. Read more
Harnessing the Collaborative Power of the Four Critical Questions of a Professional Learning Community
With so many demands on curricular teams these days collaborative time can quickly be sacrificed for coordination tasks such as scheduling events, casual dialogues of best practice, rote test modifications, and adjusting curricular pacing guides, to name a few. This kind of collaboration tends to produce shallow curricular changes, narrow instruction adjustments, non-timely remediation, and superficial assessment modifications. Read more
Why Size Doesn’t Matter
I have been blessed during the past 43 years to work in amazing school districts of all sizes—one as small as 600 students to one as large as 37,000 students. Time after time, school after school, district after district, we have learned size simply doesn’t matter for four main reasons. A highly functioning PLC continually examines and improves its capacity through four main elements: Organization, Execution, Persistence, and Celebration. Read more
Put Your Money Where Your Maxim Is: “Investing” in PLCs at the District Level
Dictionary.com defines maxim as “a general truth or principle” or “a rule of conduct.” A few years ago when I was a high school principal leading the implementation of a PLC . . . Read more
Are You Married to Your PLC?
Are you married to your professional learning community? Are you just flirting or dating? Maybe engaged? What is your level of commitment to the PLC process? These were the questions and . . . Read more
Clearing Things Up With the Cloud
The team leader taps away furiously at her computer. “I know we decided this last spring in our release day. Don’t you remember?” Her teammates watch with a variety of expressions . . . Read more
The Toughest Audience of All: Your Colleagues
I have led professional development for school faculties and at educational conferences in the United States and now in Singapore. It’s a slightly heady feeling—walking into a ballroom . . . Read more
Doing the Right Things Right: Building Capacity, Quality Control, Fidelity, and Accountability
“What drives your school improvement efforts—evidence of best practice or the pursuit of universal buy-in?” This question is posed by Dr. Richard DuFour in his article, . . . Read more
Why Your PLC Should Be Planning Backward
Okay, be honest. Have any of your professional development decisions been made at the last possible minute, or in some cases, the last possible second? How many times have you primarily based your . . . Read more
Ain’t Nothing Wrong With the Kids
This blog title represents the response of teachers regarding their achievement of what some believe is a seemingly insurmountable feat—closing the achievement gap. During their recognition . . . Read more
Educational System Versus Boys: Are We Really Helping All Students Learn?
Around the nation for the past 10-plus years, the educational battle cry has been No Child Left Behind. While there are many programs, federal and state dollars are being spent to focus energy on . . . Read more
What a Gift!
Becky’s Recent Experience While sitting in a small open waiting area of a local salon one evening in early January, two young women engrossed in conversation came in and sat beside me. As . . . Read more
GPS: Destination Known
Last month, our family decided to take a trip to New York City for a three-day visit. Needless to say, we did not have all the time needed to explore everything the city had to offer, so we had to . . . Read more
Using Protocols to Support Collaborative Teams
Over the course of the past summer I’ve had a number of opportunities to travel across our country speaking with school divisions, site leadership, and teacher teams about the tenets of . . . Read more
Should Teams Be Required to Submit Meeting Agendas?
We received a question from a principal who wanted to know if there was research to support requiring her teams to prepare and submit agendas for their team meetings. Here is our response: . . . Read more